For Immediate Release
Contact: Justin Kitsch
202-461-2365
November 17, 2009
Electrification Coalition Praises U.S.-China Electric Vehicles Initiative
Coalition Urges Administration to be Ambitious In Goals
WASHINGTON – The Electrification Coalition today applauded the announcement of the U.S.-China Electric Vehicles Initiative, and urged the Obama administration to go even further in its efforts to support an electrified transportation system. The Initiative includes the creation of electric vehicle demonstration projects that are similar in concept to the Electrification Ecosystems that have been proposed by the Coalition; the Coalition’s proposals, however, are much more ambitious.
"This is good news coming at an important time," Electrification Coalition President Robbie Diamond said. "The Electrification Roadmap released by our Coalition yesterday offers detailed policy proposals to create Electrification Ecosystems, which are similar in concept to the demonstration projects proposed by the United States and China in that they envision projects in specific cities. That said, our Ecosystems would put as many as 100,000 electric vehicles per ecosystem on the road by 2013. We believe that is an ambitious but achievable goal, and one that is necessary if we are going to have timely mass penetration of electric vehicles. We are pleased that the administration is pursuing similar concepts, and hope they will pursue even more ambitious and specific goals."
The Electrification Coalition, formally launched in Washington, D.C., on Monday, is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization committed to promoting policies and actions that will facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security vulnerabilities caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.
As its first official act, the Coalition released the Electrification Roadmap¸ a sweeping report detailing the dangers of oil dependence, explaining the benefits of electrification, describing the challenges facing electric cars, and providing specific policy proposals to overcome those challenges. The Electrification Roadmap presents a bold and specific vision: By 2040, 75 percent of light-duty vehicle miles traveled in the United States should be electric miles. As a result, oil consumption in the light-duty fleet would be reduced by more than 75 percent, and U.S. crude oil imports could effectively be reduced to zero.
Among its many policy recommendations, the Roadmap proposes the creation of electrification ‘ecosystems,’ geographic areas in which all of the elements of an electrified transportation system are deployed, thus providing a crucial first step toward moving electrification beyond a niche product into a dominant, compelling, and ubiquitous concept.
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